“But you have a great mind for figures and numbers, it seems.”
She shrugged. “They make sense. Most of the world doesn’t. So when Danny started to send those sketches of places around the world, I decided I’d surprise him. Put ’em all into one house, the one he’d be building himself if he were here today.”
She felt the familiar sadness descend. She’d resigned herself that his absence would never stop feeling like a great gaping hole. A cruel presence in itself. So she’d resolved to fight that by pouring herself into this house. Honoring who he was.
Luke ran his hand up the banister as he climbed the narrow stair to a loft above. “And who did you barter with for this?” He clapped his hand onto the banister. It was singular. With the curves and juts of a branch, but all the soft smoothness of the finest lumber.
“I, um—well, truth be told, I snatched that up from the ground. From the old oak after a storm. Sanded it down and fixed it to the wall there, and there it’ll stay, I hope.” She put her hand on it, too, running her fingers along its surface. “Helps me think, sanding away knots and bumps. Irons out the knots and bumps in life, too, somehow.”
Luke nodded. “I know what you mean,” he said. “It felt the same whenever I put pen to paper to send you a sketch. Like taking hold of something that had disappeared from the world, capturing it one last time on paper—it made the destruction feel a little . . . less.”
She stared, wide-eyed, and let out a low whistle. “You said that a whole lot better than I could’ve.” Then, after thinking a moment, she tipped her head up. “Go on up,” she said. “You might like it up there.”
He obliged, leading the way up the rest of the narrow stair to the loft, which opened by railing to the two rooms below. One wall was lined with shelves following the slope of the ceiling all the way to the floor, a circular window at the center of it all.
“For Danny’s books,” Luke said. “Right?”
“How did you—”
“We figured out quick which books we both grew up on,” Luke said. “Swallows and Amazons, The Story of Ferdinand, the Hardy Boys books.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “Those Hardy boys. If I could count the number of times they fell off cliffs and got all tied up by bad guys.” She whistled a descending whistle. “Danny would lie under that tree and read them aloud.”
“And what were you doing while he read?”
She could feel her cheeks grow warm. “I, um—I climbed.”
“I’m sorry?” Luke leaned in, apparently trying to decipher her mumbled words.
She threw up her hands. “I climbed. Up and up and up until Danny told me I’d get myself stuck in the clouds.” She laughed. “I told him someday I would. That I’d just keep on going on that upswing, fly far away to see all the world.” She grew serious. “But—some dreams fade away when you grow up, and I s’pose that’s all well and good. We trade them in for other dreams.” She looked at the cottage. “Worthier dreams. I know I belong here, now, just like Danny always knew he did. I couldn’t leave Gran or the farm.” She inhaled deeply. “Besides, there’s a whole world of adventure right here in Oak Springs, you know.” She said it firmly, trying to convince herself.
In his eyes, she saw a depth of understanding she could not account for, in a soul she’d only just met. And with it, a longing. Like the man wanted to wrap up her words and keep them safe.
“That had to be some tree,” he said.
“See for yourself.” Hannah gestured toward a doorway, which had yet to be closed off with a door. “This’ll be one of those Dutch doors someday,” she said. “The kind where the top opens separate from the bottom. From one of Danny’s sketches,” she added.
“I remember that one. He was proud of that sketch. Borrowed a village girl’s pencils to give it color, if I remember correctly.”
“That’s right,” Hannah said, leading the way through the imagined Dutch door. Outside, a balcony spread wide, covering the full length of the cottage. A sturdy railing secured the edge, and Luke rested an arm on it. Hannah watched his eyes roam over the stretching green of the fields and settle close on the tree.
“You almost feel like you’re in the branches,” he said, shielding his eyes against the morning sun. “It makes you feel closer to the tree than we actually are.”
“Exactly,” Hannah said. “Danny told me I’d be stuck in the clouds, and all he wanted to do was put down roots like that great-grandfather tree over there. So I planted his house in the branches. Or at least as close as I could without making it a bother to the inn, if they ever get running again.”
“They’re planning on it,” Luke said.
“That’s what Jerry says. He’s got high hopes of settling in there once and for all with his grandson, Arnie, being caretaker and all. I sure hope for his sake that it works out, though I don’t know what a young boy’ll do in a place so fine,” she said.
“It sounds like Jerry intends to give him all the time outdoors that he can,” Luke said.
Silence settled between them.
“Mr. Hampstead,” Hannah said, unsure what to make of the man’s presence here. It felt right, somehow, but she could not for the life of her account for the reason behind it. “Can I ask what brought you here?”
He seemed torn. The look in his eyes as they met hers was that of a man with a story, but he seemed reluctant, somehow.
“Miss Garland,” he said slowly. “I . . . have a little time, before I need to be in New York.”
“Well, thank goodness for that. It’s a good bit down the road from here. Or so I hear.”
He smiled. He had the sort of smile that took its time finding its way to the surface, so that by the time it reached its destination, it was as real and hard-won as a thing could be. “I have even more time than that,” he said, brows furrowing as he studied the perfectly parallel boards at his feet. It was a strangely fulfilling sensation, having a man who flew the skies of the world stand now supported only by boards she’d laid with her own two hands.
“Might I . . . that is, if I won’t be too much in the way . . .”
“Out with it, Mr. Hampstead.” Hannah laughed. “Promise I won’t pounce on you.”
“Well—could you use a hand? With the house, I mean.”
Hannah studied the man before her. The hands stuffed in his pockets. Hands that had sent her the world.
“Mr. Hampstead, I would be honored to have your help finishing this little old cottage.”
five
Luke could picture Oak Springs as it would look from the air. With its shops lined up all down Main Street like so many storybooks upon a shelf, bookended by the timeless water tower on one end and the white-steepled country church on the other.
It was the latter he sat in now, in the very back pew on a Sunday morning in Texas. The organist played “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” as people trickled out after the service and paused to shake the preacher’s hand.
Luke went last, hoping to escape unnoticed. He didn’t want to disrespect anyone, and one look around showed him that this town, humble though the people’s means were, took their Sundays seriously. Joyfully, but seriously, as evidenced by the number of ribbons and flowered straw hats, bright-patterned dresses and men in suits and ties. He’d learned they were farmers, most of them—and yet it was he who looked the part of a man just come in from the field, with his travel-worn clothes, dull from one too many washings in sinks along the way. He’d planned to buy new clothes once he landed in New York, and he meant to travel light until then.
Well, the kind folks of Oak Springs were likely well on their way home to Sunday dinners just now, and none would be the wiser that a man resembling a vagabond had been in their midst.
After shaking the preacher’s hand to the organist’s last measures, he stepped into the sun and loosened his collar at the shocking heat of midmorning Texas. What was wrong with him? He’d endured extremes worse than this. On the cold end of the spectrum, but st
ill. He swiped his arm over his forehead, letting his eyes adjust.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked himself aloud—and opened his eyes to see twenty faces, all answering with welcome grins.
Luke gulped.
It seemed the residents of Oak Springs were not well on their way home to Sunday dinner. They were scattered in groups and pairs, chatting across the emerald-green lawn to the chorus of cicadas droning in the trees beyond.
“What’s wrong with us?” Jerry piped up. “What’s wrong with you, more like! You look like you just crawled out from under a rock, blinking like a baby,” he said.
Hannah’s grandmother—Gran, he’d heard her call her—strode over and thwapped Jerry in the shoulder with her red purse.
“You look just fine, darlin’,” she said. “Now, come on home with me and Hannah. We have a roast in the oven and we’ll need someone to carve it for us.”
Hannah slipped in next to Gran and looked askance at the notion that they needed help with such a task, but then her grandmother gave her a look that silenced her. He had a hunch these two women knew their way around carving a roast better than most army air force pilots, but he recognized a lifeline when he saw one. She was throwing him a rope.
“Luke Hampstead,” Gran said, sweeping her arm toward him in one grand introduction to the town, “this is everyone. You’ll get their names in time. Everyone, this is Luke. Helpin’ out on the farm for a little while.” Her proclamation was met with furrowed brows and puzzled glances, as if “for a little while” wasn’t a saying they heard much around here. “He’s just back from the war, for goodness’ sake. Is that how you greet a war hero?”
At this, they came alive in an outburst of jovial exclamations, and before he knew it, Luke was enveloped in a cloud of handshakes and hearty claps on the back and several dinner and supper invitations. Gran intervened again, though, reminding them with a wink that they needed him to carve that roast.
That roast—together with the plate full of skillet potatoes, gravy, and hot butterhorn rolls—showed him for the first time he could recall what a true home-cooked meal was. The memory of the smells filling the farmhouse stayed with him all that day and night, as he thought back on the kindly women who had welcomed him in.
If Hannah was a human tornado, Gran was the gentle, warm wind that blew in with the sun. He didn’t know what he had to offer them but prayed his time here might bring some of that kindness back upon them, too.
That week, his hope got off to a rough start. While Hannah was away working at the Feed and Dime, he spent the days familiarizing himself with the status of the cottage. Finishing off projects where he could—a bit of trim here, a shelf or two there—but found he needed Hannah’s insight with most of the bigger projects. Not knowing just what she envisioned, he didn’t want to presume.
On his third day, he’d secured the branch railing in a few loose spots, touched up some paint, and sanded some rough patches on the stairs. Sitting on the floor in the loft, the sun pouring through the open door, he recalled Hannah’s plans for a Dutch door there someday.
“Today,” he said aloud. “Someday is today.” He recalled Danny’s sketch of the door. Could even picture his friend bent over the drawing as if it were an invasion plan to end the war.
He set to sorting through the lumber in the back, listing hardware to purchase on a scrap of paper, making measurements, sawing marked lines. Perhaps it was the noise of his back-and-forth sawing, or the way the project had swallowed him up, mind and body, but he was entirely consumed with the work when a tap on his shoulder made him jerk in surprise.
“Hey!” he said, a little too loudly. He could still hear the grating cry of the saw ringing in his hears, though he’d stopped work. Hannah stepped back, hands in the air in surrender.
“Hey,” Luke said again, calming his voice. “I mean, hello. Hello, Hannah.”
She tilted her head quizzically. “Hi, Luke.” Her voice mimicked his serious and schooled tone. “What are you working on?”
“A door,” he said, the words coming out too hurried and sounding more like adore. Hannah’s pretty mouth turned up at the corners, mischief in her eyes. “A door,” he repeated, with a painstaking pause in between the two words.
“So you said,” Hannah replied. “Well, it looks mighty fine, Mr. Hampstead,” she said, nodding an official approval. “It looks a sight better than the one I tried to make,” she said, laughing.
“You made one?” Luke kicked himself. He knew he should’ve waited and asked before blazing forward like this.
“See for yourself,” Hannah said, leading the way to a scrap pile around the corner and gesturing at a piece of wood no longer than his own legs. It was a door, true enough—and an impressive one, at that. Just . . . small. “Ladies and gentlemen, the revolutionary miniature door! Only one of its kind in existence, and sure to go fast, so don’t hold your wallets too close, now.”
Luke chuckled, scratching his head. “How . . . I mean, I saw you with your measurements. You’re very accurate. How did this . . .”
“Happen? Glad you asked, my good man.” She carried on in her salesman impression. “This here is what occurs when a perfectionist starts with the perfect size of wood, but then also wants the perfect cut, the perfect sanding, the perfect ornamentation, and keeps slicing off little corners and cuts to slice off mistakes and make it appear just so. What you get is, indeed” —Hannah held up a finger for emphasis—“the perfect door. In miniature. The just-so door, if you will.” She rested her hands on her hips proudly, though the blush on her face told him she was, under all that show, embarrassed by her endeavor.
He’d known his fair share of embarrassments in his time and felt a sudden camaraderie with this girl. Woman, he corrected himself. There was no mistaking that; her loveliness was only emphasized by her girlish enthusiasm.
He studied her, then crouched, running his finger over the door. It was truly a work of art. She’d carved vines into the upper arch of it, sanded it to velvety smoothness, and it pained him to see it lying here in a pile of scraps. It seemed to go against the very nature of the cottage that salvaged broken things and gave them a place to live forever.
“This doesn’t belong here,” he said simply, rather enjoying the confounded look she gave him.
She held a palm upward toward it as he stood. “What do you mean? It’s clearly—well, too small. Too big for a doll’s house. I can’t give it to one of the neighbors for that. Too small for the cottage . . .” She let her thoughts trail off, eyes big as she stared at him.
He pursed his mouth. “Leave it to me,” he said thoughtfully, seriously. He had an idea brewing.
“Alright, Mr. Hampstead. You do whatever you like with that.”
“Are you sure?” He needed her permission for what he had planned but didn’t want to give too much away.
“Entirely. It was bound for the big bonfire we have come harvest time, so you can make a suit out of it for all I care.” She brightened. “Say, that’s not a bad idea. Mrs. Hollis came into the shop today and was saying how you were in need of a suit. She told me to tell you to stop by the fabric store this week and she’ll get you all shipshape.”
Now it was his turn to feel the keen heat of embarrassment. “I can’t argue that,” he said.
Later that week, when Luke arrived around the time he’d noticed Hannah usually came, his stride carried him under the arching branches of the reaching oak to reveal a sight that set him running: his Dutch door, swinging in midair over the balcony railing. Hannah was stationed up on the balcony, her face beet red, holding her breath as she leaned backward, leveraging the rope and pulling with all her might to get that door upstairs. But the door barely budged, the rope snagged on something on the railing. She was barely hanging on, keeping it from crashing into a window or the ground below, and then they’d have two doors bound for the bonfire.
In a matter of seconds, Luke had bounded up the stairs, freed the rope fr
om its snag, and taken hold of the coil to help Hannah hoist it over the rest of the way. They worked in tandem, pulling in perfect time until the door appeared at the railing. He was thrown back to the singular and satisfying feeling of striving together with someone toward a common goal and finding in it a brotherhood. The last person he’d worked so in stride with had been Danny.
With a quick nod from Hannah silently affirming his plan, he left her side and eased the door over the railing. Their eyes met, shared victory brimming in both of them. He felt he should salute her, offer a handshake, or show some gesture of that shared brotherhood. Only . . . looking at this fount of words and energy, the way she looked fit to burst with joy, he had the sudden urge to gather her up in an embrace instead.
That was different from a brotherhood. Very different.
He cleared his throat, shoving back the ridiculous notion. Of course it was different. She wasn’t a brother. If anything, she should be like a sister to him, seeing as how Danny was like a brother. That was logical.
The ache in his arms without her in them was not logical.
“Good work, pilot,” she said, her smile dimpling rosy cheeks.
“Same to you,” he said. “That was a good idea, the pulley you rigged up to get that upstairs.”
She shrugged. “Maybe in theory. But if you hadn’t come along when you had—I’m afraid my pulley would’ve been the death of your beautiful door, there. Speaking of which . . .” She dashed inside to the loft area and snatched up a carefully folded paper bag. “I come bearing gifts.”
He opened the bag and saw everything he’d listed on his scrap of paper earlier that week. Hinges, screws, all of it. “How did you know?”
Again with her nonchalant shrug. “A girl knows things. What can I say?”
He was impressed.
“Plus, I snatched up your list when you weren’t looking.” She winked and, without missing a beat, sidled up to the door again. “Now, let’s get this door up, shall we?”
By the time they’d released the Dutch door from its rope binding, rigged up a way to hang it, secured all the hardware, and tested it out, it was clear that Hannah Garland was a force to be reckoned with. Brilliant and bright, intense and jovial, all wrapped together.
The Kissing Tree Page 19